7 responses to “Stewart Vs. Santelli”

Anyone can cherry pick quotes from commentators from a 24 hour network and make them look wrong, particularly when no one saw this coming. There were many bearish commentators on CNBC over the same period.

Granted, Santelli and Cramer are asses. But what the hell does Stewart know? Sure, he is funny when he avoids kissing the ass of those in power helping to ruin the economy. So that makes him some sort of news genius?

What is consistent among all the televised dolts (those appearing on Fast Money are not among them, JS has obviously never seen the program) is that they are remarkably inconsistent. Clearly the only bailout we should be critical is the one that offends our audience. That is news?

Sensationalism and pandering is the profession of nearly all of these “journalists.” This is no different than the politicians grandstanding on television. The problem is, the vast majority of Americans can’t or choose not to see through it.

This isn’t mere cherry-picking to make schmucks like Jim Cramer and Rick Santelli seem wrong. The quotes, and perhaps more importantly, the timing of the quotes, clearly demonstrate that these screamers on cable news know as much about the markets as Jon Stewart does — which is dick. The major difference being that Stewart’s job is precisely to satirize the nonstop bullshit of a 24-hour news cycle, not forecast the country’s economic future. Stewart’s evisceration of CNBC doesn’t make him a genius, but it clearly points to how worthless such a network is, especially during a time of bona fide crisis.

Did you even watch the clip? If they wanted it to be of any substance, they would have shown Santelli failing to be critical of other bailouts. That would have made a point. I was going to blog on that myself prior to Stewart, as I hate fake heroes like Santelli. But I couldn’t get ahead of all of this.

However, Santelli is right they shouldn’t bailout people who can’t pay their mortgages. Stockholders who made mistakes lost their money, why shouldn’t homeowners who made mistakes lose their homes?

As to the cherry picking, why don’t you watch Fast Money or search youtube for a clip of Peter Schiff who predicted this crisis to some degree. He has been all over CNBC. CNBC is just a news network. They people on it all have different ideas. Just like the majority of the population, most of the journalists, anchors, traders, had no idea the depth of this crisis. You have to use your own brain as to whom to listen to. I am fairly certain that many of the traders on Fast Money made money trading last year.

Further, do you expect useful news from ANY of the major new networks? CNBC is far more likely to have useful and correct news items.

What is lost in all of this cheap shot blather, is your (and John Stewart’s) personal hero our great savior, BHO, voted for all these bailouts and has be part of the problem for years leading up to this crisis. He didn’t see this coming, yet you elected him to run the country. It is easy to blather about people “getting it wrong” when nearly everyone did. But it is not an excuse to continue to get it wrong, and not bother getting to the actual reason this crisis exists. The root cause of this crisis is the very group the ignorant masses are cheering to solve it.

The policy of the Fed dropping rates to nearly nothing after the tech collapse was the root cause of the housing boom and allowing the excessive leverage to be taken by financial institutions. If interest rates were actually set by supply and demand, it would have never have been possible to take on such insane levels of leverage, or bid up home prices. Asking business to operate with the most important price in the economy, the price of money hidden from view by manipulation is asking for disaster. Never mind the effect of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and myriad of regulation encouraging lending to subprime borrowers. Oddly enough, the outrage there has been forgotten. Why? Because who wants to admit that Chris Dodd and Democrats have their own share of blame in all this.

The bottom line in all this, the best way to solve this economic crisis is to actually bother to learn how the economy works. Obama, McCain, Rush, Stewart, Clinton, Steele, they are all completely ignorant of this.

Look, Jim, we can do this for the rest of our lives, by which I mean argue our internet-y faces off over the minutiae of this bullshit. My point was this: cocksuckers like Rick Santelli get lauded as cheap heroes, and no one seems to look critically at the process of the networks that hire people like Santelli. Stewart is funny. That’s all. He’s no genius. The real lesson here is don’t blow off your late-night talk show appearance. First McCain. Now Santelli. I say fuck ’em both.

I would agree with Clark’s second to last comment. Also, JP, I don’t buy your defense of CNBC as “just a news network,” who employed at least a few talking heads who predicted the crisis. Bullshit, CNBC isn’t just another news network, it’s a network that promises to be THE ONLY business and financial news network worth watching, for the moneyed population. If you are a 24-hour news channel that’s supposed to be providing it’s citizens with something worth consuming, and your focus is the fucking economy, then you ought to have more than a few guys crying doomsday. And yeah, most news anchors, journalists, etcetra didn’t have a clue–that doesn’t make it even remotely OK, and furthermore, I triple-dog dare you to read any of Krugman’s stuff from the last 8 years, much of which was published early in 2003’s “The Great Unravelling,” which predicts the current crisis with stupefying accuracy. I’m sure you would write Krugman off as another socialist class-war freak, but he’s been pretty spot on, and his only argument with BHO, is that he and the dems haven’t done ENOUGH money printing, etc., to get us out of this shit hole.

“Look, Jim, we can do this for the rest of our lives, by which I mean argue our internet-y faces off over the minutiae of this bullshit.”

Oh, and I expect we will.

“First McCain. Now Santelli. I say fuck ‘em both.”

I couldn’t agree more.

As to BJ, if you, or Krugman actually believe that printing money helps the economy, you are sadly mistaken. Money isn’t magic. Printing up paper slips, or shuffling around computer entries cannot help the economy. It just goes to show how lost we are on our way. The economy runs on people actually doing things and creating things that people need. If investment is not backed by real savings, people foregoing consumption, it is bound to cause problems.

Consider a small island, fishermen, berry pickers, net makers, basket makers, hut builder and fixer, a guy who grows pot. Everyone decides the love pot so much, and they always have it on them, that instead of the berry guy getting just fish, for his berries from the fish guy, they simplify it. The start just shuffling hand fulls of green stuff in order to buy the stuff they want. Want berries, as long as you have some green, you are good to go. Even if the berry guy doesn’t want fish. Now, say the pot guy offers to give them pieces of paper so they don’t have to carry around as much pot. They start trading in the paper. Everyone loves it, when they need the some pot, they just turn in some of the paper. Life is good. Now lets say, some crisis happens, maybe the fishermen tried some new nets that didn’t work. The fishermen are distraught, and no one has any fish. At this point they have two choices, and really it depends on what sort of brilliant economist they listen to. Some would say, have the pot guy lend a bunch of paper to the fishermen. He can print money for free and then he can buy a new net. This seems to solve the problem. Until people start redeeming money for pot. The new money has exceeded the supply of pot. Now they have traded a fish shortage for a pot shortage. No one actually saved. Goods were just redistributed. No more goods were created. It doesn’t matter how much money is printed, people don’t get better off. The other option is that people who have accumulated some extra pot, maybe they don’t smoke it, but just use it as money. They lend it to the fisherman with the goal of increasing their wealth. This person chooses to live less extravagantly now for a better future. Maybe he wants to retire. The fishermen gets their net. No pot shortage, soon, no fish shortage.

If you would like, I could go on to explain why Krugman is wrong about saving, and how saving is actually a good idea, and why saving, not consumption is important for a healthy economy.

In other news, if all this shit gets any worse, we might just wish we lived on that little island. Better get an acoustic and some extra strings.